Kris Season 3, episode 1. Haikaa Yamamoto.
This is the actual fluency podcast, helping you become a better language learner by providing motivating weekly inspiration, as well as top tips and tricks from expert guests. And now, your host, Kris Broholm.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Actual Fluency podcast. This is the premiere of the third season, the very first episode. And I'm so excited to have you here. Today is a very special time because it's taken me a long time to get back with a new season, but trust me, when I say, I've been working hard behind the scenes to make it a lot better, to make it a lot more enjoyable experience for you guys out there.
And in this, in a few minutes, we're going to hear the interview, or I don't know, even know if I should call my podcast an interview podcast, but it's definitely me asking questions. Uh, but I also get asked questions by my, by my guests a lot. So I think it's more of a conversation, actually. So you're going to hear my conversation with Haikaa Yamamoto, who you may have seen from such songs as Work of Art, which is a favorite of mine, or you might have seen her in the Benny Lewis Skype Me Maybe video, which is a hilarious video that I must have seen a million times. It's, it's just great. And um, over the time, I've gotten to know almost everyone, anyone in the video, and it's, it's pretty cool.
But, before we get into that, let me just do a few admin stuff, you know, a few, uh, messages here, a public service. The first message I want to tell you about is that the podcast is now video as well. This doesn't impact you if you like to listen to the podcast on your phone or whatever, on whatever device you use for podcasting, whether you're out running, or in your car, or whatever. So that will stay as it was before. The video part is going to be on YouTube on the Actual Fluency channel. So I encourage you to subscribe there if you like video content.
And the, sort of the benefit of video content for people who go there is that you will get to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. For the audio part, obviously the interview is cut and it's edited. It's not edited inside the conversation, but I always have a little talk before and after with the guests. And I thought that would be interesting to show people on YouTube, and also it's easier for me not to edit. So if you go on on the YouTube channel Actual Fluency, you can find these episodes in their full, unedited length, which usually includes quite a substantial amount of behind-the-scenes material. So if you're interested in that stuff, you know, go to the the YouTube channel and enjoy that. The audio is going to continue just as before.
This episode is a little bit longer because it's the first episode, so I got carried away a little bit, but it's a very nice conversation with Haikaa. And before we get into that, there's also just one small thing I wanted to tell you about. I'm getting a fair amount of questions on email, random questions about anything really, like, uh, what do I do for a living, uh, how do I learn French, um, how's it like to live in Budapest, uh, you know, I get tons of questions. And I answer all of them to to the best of my ability. Sometimes I might miss some. Um, but what I wanted to offer you was send me a question, and I'll do a YouTube video about them. So, send me any question, you can go to actualfluency.com/contact, or you can see the big contact menu item on the front page, and just send me any question you'd like me to answer, and I'll make a a special video, and maybe even include the audio as well, so I'll so there'll be more than one piece of content a week.
And um, this is basically, you know, I'm not a language learning expert by any means. I've interviewed over 70 very successful language learners. So I obviously have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but as you as you probably know from the blog, I consider myself quite a poor student, quite a terrible student. So it's not that I want to, you know, try to spread my gospel of how amazing I am in language learning, it's simply an offer for you to get any sort of question answered that you might have. It could be about languages, it could be about Denmark, it could be about, you know, learning languages, it could be about how to learn when you're not feeling totally okay, you know, sort of like a depression state. We get into that a little bit in this interview. Um, or it could be anything really, it doesn't even have to do with languages. I'd be happy to answer any question you have. And I might make, you know, a separate YouTube video for every question or I might split several small ones into a a big one.
And on that note, you know, if you really do want some language learning advice from an expert, I'd advise you to go to uh uh Ollie's blog, Ollie Richards, which is I Will Teach You A Language.com. He's got a a podcast where he answers people's questions. And Ollie has learned seven or eight languages, I don't know who counts anymore, but he's a very talented language learner, and I'm sure if you have any very technical language learning questions, he would be the one, he would be perfect to answer them for you. But of course I'm happy to offer my, uh, wisdom. If not obtained by proxy, then at least the experience of being a terrible student is also always quite unique.
So thank you so much, and to everyone who wrote in and asking what was going on with the podcast, you know, I'm so grateful that you supported it and sorry for the extra delay, you know, it has been a long time since the second season ended. Uh, an unreasonably long time, and this won't happen again. I promise, now we're back on track and I got some amazing guests lined up for you for this season. I mean, how about Tim Doner? You, you've been asking for Tim since the very first week of the podcast, and now we're finally going to get him on the show to pick his brain about how it is to be, uh, Mr. Tim Doner, uh, who I'm sure you've all heard about. And apart from Tim, I've got a line-up of amazing guests, and I hope we can get them on, like the director behind the movie Hyperglot, Mr. Michael Harris, who's, um, I think is a very interesting perspective to get.
But before I ramble on about tons of exciting guests, I think it's time to move into the segment of the conversation today with, uh, Haikaa Yamamoto. And today is a little special, it's not so much about learning languages, it's about finding balance with yourself, how to connect to your real self, and how to honor yourself. And I think that's a very important part of being a language learner, and it kind of goes hand in hand. But we get into all that stuff in just a minute. You know, thank you so much, and a special thank to thank you to the people in New York who came up and said, uh, I'm a I'm a fan of your podcast, I listen to it all the time. You know, that means the world to me, and it's part of the reason that I'm doing this every week, you know, I'm, I'm pumped, and I think of you guys. So, thank you so much, and enjoy the new season.
Alright everyone, we're back with another episode of the Actual Fluency podcast and another season, indeed. And on today's season or episode, I've got the amazing Haikaa Yamamoto. And I'm going to say Haikaa has been so amazing to actually send along a bio, because I ask everyone on the show to write a little bit about yourself, and everyone is just like, blogger, podcaster, or I make videos. And I'm like, okay, that's useful. But Haikaa actually sent a really nice bio, so I'm going to use that. Um, bear with me for reading it out loud. "Honor yourself, honor others, honor the planet. Haikaa radiates these messages and more through her music and writing. The multicultural pop singer-songwriter and author hails from Brazil, Japan, and the US." Haikaa, welcome to the show.
Haikaa Thank you. Hi, Kris. It's nice to be here.
Kris Fantastic. And of course, I, um, I first heard of you back in the day when you made the Skype Me Maybe video, or you had a an active role in it. I, I remember, who's that singing that, you know, the long, uh, you held the notes for a long time. I was like, that that doesn't sound like a random polyglot, you know, so I looked you up and I was like, ah, that's really cool, uh, that you have, uh, time to come by the podcast.
Haikaa It was a nice, yeah, it was a, it was a, it was great, uh, participating in that because to me, it's always been like language and music. So, uh, to be able to participate in Skype Me Maybe, actually put me in contact with a lot of cool folks around the world, like you. So, you know, thanks again to Benny Lewis for including me in that, and and I had some fun singing in, uh, Rajasthani. Yeah.
Kris Yeah, there you go. That's uh, languages never heard of. People have never heard of before was, uh, first presented in that video, which was amazing. But, uh, before we get into the, the language part, I just wanted people to get to know you a little better if they haven't heard about you before. So, what's your story? What's your background? How did you become this world loving and traveling into languages, music and, and, and how did you get to where you are today?
Haikaa Okay. I'll try to be brief, because I like to talk. Okay. Um, so I'm a Japanese descendant, right? My parents are Japanese, but I was born, uh, in Brazil. So that's two languages there already, because my mother, uh, spoke to us from a very young age, uh, in Japanese. Um, afterwards, um, I think when I was around 12 years old, I started studying in an American school, while still I was in Brazil, so that was my third, uh, language right there. And, um, after that, I went to the US, and I lived in Japan. Um, so I, I really always had a very good opportunity to be in contact with, uh, many languages.
Having said that, I think it's also something that I have always loved, you know. I remember, ever since I was a very, very little child, uh, not being very shy, uh, every time I saw somebody speaking a language I didn't know, I'd be like, excuse me, what language are you speaking? And, and, and how do you say hello? And like, I was that kind of kid. So, it's always something that I have been very, very attracted, um, towards. So, both things, I think, music and language sort of define, um, who I am.
Uh, with regards to the music, I think that it, I
